Follies in America - by Kerry Dean Carso (Paperback)

About the Book

Book Synopsis

Follies in America examines historicized garden buildings, known as "follies," from the nation's founding through the American centennial celebration in 1876. In a period of increasing nationalism, follies--such as temples, summerhouses, towers, and ruins--brought a range of European architectural styles to the United States. By imprinting the land with symbols of European culture, landscape gardeners brought their idea of civilization to the American wilderness.

Kerry Dean Carso's interdisciplinary approach in Follies in America examines both buildings and their counterparts in literature and art, demonstrating that follies provide a window into major themes in nineteenth-century American culture, including tensions between Jeffersonian agrarianism and urban life, the ascendancy of middle-class tourism, and gentility and social class aspirations.

Review Quotes

Follies in America delves into the history of the ornamental structures, or follies, that dotted, as some still do, many a private garden, public park, rural cemetery, or site of natural beauty in the nineteenthcentury United States

This interdisciplinary look at the cultural and architectural history of follies in America is illustrated with examples with examples from literature, the arts, and the landscape itself. Carso gives us a broad sweep using the primary model for America, the eighteen-century English landscape garden. Less concerned with style, she grapples with the meaning of this building type, one that is at once 'recreational and amusing' but also 'didactic and enlightening.

About the Author

Kerry Dean Carso is Professor of Art History at the State University of New York at New Paltz. She is the author of American Gothic Art and Architecture in the Age of Romantic Literature. Follow her on X @kerrydeancarso.